


Citizen Erased

by pentipus



Series: Character Studies [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Muse
Genre: Character Study, Citizen Erased, M/M, Muse - Freeform, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:04:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>wash me away<br/>clean your body of me<br/>erase all the memories<br/>they will only bring us pain<br/>and i've seen all i'll ever need</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Citizen Erased

They fell into the Potomac like lead weights. Kevlar and leather and polyester, sodden and heavy like their aching limbs. The brown water washed around them as the Soldier watched Steve Rogers’ body sinking down, his arms above his head. The Soldier wanted the river to wash Rogers away, the current taking him to the sea. _But his blood is my blood_. He didn’t know how he knew it but he did. It flowed through the water, red to pink to brown, atoms and atoms and atoms taken apart and taken away. And still he sunk down.

“You’re my best friend.” Those words in that order made no sense. _He knew me._ The Soldier wanted the Potomac to take him, but his metal fist closed around the leather straps at Rogers’ chest and pulled him from the muddy depths. The Soldier stared at him on the wet bank, blood blooming from the wounds in his stomach. A body much bigger than any the Soldier remembered, but somehow familiar, somehow known to him.

But memories meant malfunction, memories meant pain. In the past memories had meant black cloth over his eyes, the wet warm press of pads against his skin, tracking his heart beat as they pumped fluids through the IV in his arm, his veins full of clear molasses. _Wipe him_. Memories meant a metal vice at his temples, targeting the soft pink curves of his brain, slowly burning away at the intricate whorls of his mind.

They had developed a way to target specific areas, leaving those parts that told him how to kill, how to strip a gun, how to cover his tracks. Left him full of a thousand ways to take people apart, but took away all the parts that remembered fire escapes and shared cigarettes and thick woollen jackets and gum for a penny. But there was no amount of poison in his veins and heat through his skull that could erase that memory of the man on the bridge, of Captain Steve Rogers. Of the span of his shoulders, simultaneously thin and broad, the blue of his eyes, the slope of his nose. Those things were bound into every atom of the Soldier’s being. Whether he understood it or not.

At night the Soldier dreamed about a war, sepia toned. He dreamed of peacoats, itching and freezing and clogged with mud. He dreamed about red curves, red lips, gazing at something he wanted _. No._ Gazing at someone gazing at something he wanted. And blue eyes, always. And falling. Falling and falling and falling. And the cold. And the pain. Metal fingers in his mouth, foreign voices in his ears. And the pain.

As he beat the blood from that familiar face, he beat the blood from his own veins. He had wanted the Potomac to wash him away, for the current to bear him up and take him to the sea. For the little creatures there to break apart his pink skin until he was nothing but bones. Take him away piece by piece. Clean his body to the bone.

And all he can think was, _Please. Please, erase all the memories. They only bring me pain._

**Author's Note:**

> Song fic based on Muse's "Citizen Erased".


End file.
